This sounds great to me, especially where she insists on having the students do the work themselves, ALL the students. And that initial drop in scores was, as I see it, due simply to raising the standard beyond what the kids were used to or expecting. This teacher also sounds intelligent and competent enough to design and massage her own methods in practical ways to get the lessons across without micromanagement from higher authorities. Heck, I'll bet this kind of teaching will show spectacular results within the first semester, to say nothing of five years down the road. This might even give teachers themselves motivation to raise their game.

Let's hear it for smart and dedicated teachers! Hip, hip, hooray!!

As far as I can tell from the article, the lesson plan is as follows:

1. Teacher introduces the standards.

2. Teacher introduces the story.

3. Students read the story.

4. Students circle unfamiliar words and in pairs try to define them.

5. Students complete one short-answer question.

Am I missing something here? This does not seem to be the most earth-shattering lesson plan I have ever seen. This is the best that this high-powered research group can come up with? As for using context clues to define vocab words, see my other post. I'm looking at the bios of the people involved in Achieve. They seem very long on administrative experience, and a little short on actual classroom experience. Reading one bio, I see that the person who directed Ohio's "K-12 literacy initiatives, [and] served as the State lead for Ohio in the development of the Common Core State Standards in English language arts/literacy," has had exactly five years of experience actually teaching in the classroom. And that experience is barely mentioned in the bio, like an afterthought. Seriously. Can I have your job? I'm coming up on a decade in the classroom, and I don't care what research purports to show, experience matters. I'm a better teacher than I was three years ago.

I really feel like it takes a minimum of ten years in the classroom before anyone should even try to start calling the shots at the policy level. But experienced teachers are in very short supply because the job is not respected. And a lot of potentially great teachers move on quickly to swankier, cushier jobs rather than continue hacking away in the classroom.

My ideal teacher? Mr. Miyagi. 70+ years actually practicing the art form. Small class sizes. Lots of direct instruction. No strong desire for fame and prestige. Martial arts schools have a much better paradigm, IMO, probably because if their teaching is not good, their students will get their butts kicked.

Years ago, when I was teaching migrant summer school through our public school system, I was pulled out of my classroom to take a phone call from a doctoral candidate at our local university. She wanted to observe my class and asked if she could come the next afternoon. I told her she was welcome to observe but summer classes ran from 8:30 to noon. She became rather irate with me and said that it conflicted with her own classes and her adviser said she needed to have "some" classroom experience before graduating at the end of the summer. That is the type of person who must be writing Common Core lesson plans. You can bet those folks make a lot more money than experienced teachers working in the trenches. They never had to go to the local jail to give parent/teacher conferences (both parents). They never had to call social services because a student's front teeth were rotting and she was in pain. They never had to challenge a bright (or even average) student while teaching a simplified curriculum to children who were four grade levels behind. As an undergraduate in a highly respected school of education in the Big Ten, I was not even taught how to do a lesson plan. I had to reinvent the wheel. In my next life I'm coming back as an over paid education professor/consultant who maybe puts in 20 hours a week during 9 months of the year.

The bummer is that the kids will move onto another teacher who might not be capable of doing the same job.

Or other kids in the same school will suffer at the hands of teachers who are just collecting a paycheck and because their aggregate scores across the board don't stand out, what one teacher is doing doesn't get noticed and spread around.

That's part of the problem when so many people are doing so many different things it's hard to tell what is actually working. Don't get me wrong I'm glad that society is actually trying to solve this problem but we are very close to cluttering and clouding the progress with a lot of noise.

No doubt we are on the verge of getting tired of the subject and not doing anything concrete to fix the underlying problems, like our ADHD society does with just about everything...

Most learning a person will do in his or her life will come from less than capable teachers. Learning to learn is the most invaluable skill.

Good points, but I still think the less than adequate teachers will ultimately reveal themselves under this new set of standards. Unfortunately it's going to take a little time for them to be weeded out. Let's not toss the baby out with the bathwater. At worst, I can't imagine this being any worse than what we have now. At best, it could be the salvation we've been looking for for a couple of generations. Only time and practice will tell. I beg you, be a little patient and give it time to work. If they can make sure the political bozos keep their hands off of it, I expect this could start showing spectacular results within just two years.

How about more focus on training and supporting all teachers to be great, rather than weeding out and punishing them?

Giving them a reasonable chance to rise to expectations is good. But you still can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. And there's no getting around the fact that some so-called teachers are sow's ears who wouldn't be in the profession were they not unreasonably protected by the powers-that-be. The consuming public has been calling for a cull for a long time, to much frustrating resistance. It's our own kids, the next generation, who will pay the costs. Some would point out that the last couple of generations are already paying some costs.

For transparency sake, I am a teacher in NC where our General Assembly is trying to dismantle the career status or "tenure" system. In our Right To Work state, career status does not equate the tenure of College Professors and does not mean employment for life. Instead, Career Status simply guarantees that a teacher is afforded Due Process in order to be dismissed. The system is already in place for bad teachers to be "culled" as you put it, but it requires documentation and following procedure on the part of increasingly overworked administrators. Coupled with the lack of people lining up at the door to take vacant teaching positions, this means that bad teachers may occupy the same space as good teachers. Also, in life, we can't all be great or exceptional. There has to be someone below average and someone average in order for someone to be above average, that's just simple statistics. Also, what one defines as a 'bad' teacher is colored by a lot of things that really have nothing to do with the quality of the education being afforded a student. Some label teachers with high expectations as 'bad', while I have seen teachers who assign worksheet after worksheet to students, and give grades based on how much of an issue a child was for them (basically the hallmarks of what I would consider a bad teacher), but who gave selflessly to the school their time and labor beyond any reasonable hours kept by anyone else at the school and who developed rapport and relationships with students that were deep and caring. In short, many of us may be 'bad' in one sense, but truly remarkable in another and equally important way. Most of us are now demoralized beyond measure and are ready to no longer be a political punching bag.

Beautifully put. I remember complaining about one of my old HS teachers to my mom and she snapped back at me "He may have been a bad teacher to you, but other kids in that school need him." This made me think, and I realized all the kids who were potential drop outs signed up for his criminal law elective class every year. He made it easy to get a passing grade, so they wanted to be in his class. But certainly, they had to have learned at least something about our justice system over the course of a year. He advocated for each of them, and helped see many on through to graduation.

I hate to come off as sounding like I advocate for incompetent teachers (he was competent, just not challenging enough for my liking) or for students to get a degree without much knowledge ... but I'm a realist. And not every kid is going to Harvard, and some kids need a teacher that simply believes in them.

Shawn - your post is eloquent and insightful. As someone who works in education, I can relate to what you wrote. I recently had a parent-teacher conference with my 4th grader's teacher and afterwards I asked the teacher what she thought of common core. She talked passionately for a half-hour about how this entire process was created and built by politicians in Washington, without involving nearly enough input from teachers, parents and others directly involved with students. She brought out binders and showed me filing cabinets filled with lesson plans and exercises she designed to prepare students for the STAR test. "All of this - over 15 years of my life work - is now worthless." She also felt that teachers are the scapegoat (or political punching bag, as you put it) for our subpar education achievement rates, and now some politicians are trying to make "a name for themselves" with another educational reform despite the fact that almost none of them have ever taught K-12.

"this entire process was created and built by politicians in Washington"

No, it wasn't. There seems to be a black spot on common core because of the way it was supported in Washington - some say it was forced on states. But it was NOT "created and built by politicians in Washington." The Common Core was driven by state governors and state education superintendents as a result of concerns/pressures from the business world. It is driven by economics, not politics. The standards may not be perfect, but in most states they represent an improvement over previous standards. When the PISA results come out every year, people get all excited about how the US is falling behind. Guess what those top performing countries have that we don't? Rigorous national standards. If we could let go of politics and blaming long enough to do what is best for students - whether it is Common Core or not - we could actually achieve the goal of educating all students to be ready for careers, college, and life.

There is a big shift in teacher thinking required by the Common Core standards, but it is in the curriculum guidelines (or "unpacking documents" as we call them in NC) that the methodology and thinking behind the standards is illuminated. I have been dealing with this with my own child, a second grader, and the new math standards for his grade. One of the standards that led me to meet with the principal was about being able to add numbers within the 1-20 group 'from memory'. The assignment sent home by the teachers was that students were to "memorize" sets of addition problems and their knowledge would be assessed through timed tests.

I have taught math at the middle grades level and the idea of memorization and timed tests struck me as a very wrong approach. Memorization doesn't yield understanding for every child, and while you can get a group of students to all 'know' that 2+8 =10 through memorization, for some, that will be an arbitrarily memorized factoid with no more meaning than E=mc^2. In reading the unpacking documents, the standard was further explained with the admonishment that the use of the words "from memory" WERE NOT to be confused with the word "memorize". The approach was to be that teachers should discuss mental strategies for solving the problems and should question students to explain their mental strategies in order to find causes of error and to suggest other strategies that might make the student more successful. In speaking with the principal, she confirmed my suspicion that the assignment sent home was a recycled assignment from BCC (before Common Core). The unpacking document further explains that the standard does not advocate the use of timed tests. As a math teacher, I valued accuracy over speed. Accuracy is a product of learning, speed is a product of time.

So do teachers have to reevaluate what they have always done? Yes, but Common Core isn't unique in causing teachers to do that. Good teachers constantly tweak and refine their methodology and pedagogy over time. New standards are nothing new, and have always been a time for teachers to revisit their approach to what they teach.

Unfortunately, the teacher you spoke with is uninformed about the origins of Common Core. The Common Core is a state level initiative developed by a consortium of states. It does raise the bar, it does favor conceptual understanding over lower levels of learning like memorization, it unfortunately does rely too much on testing and places too much in the hands of private industry. However, on balance, I feel it is a good thing.

So-called due process in NY can take years. I'm sorry, but it doesn't take years to fire an underperforming or insubordinate employee at a law firm, why should we settle for that nonsense with people paid to appropriately educate our children?

Would you like an administrator to be able to arbitrarily dismiss a teacher for exposing children to material that conflicts with his personal religious, political, or moral views? How about if a teacher wants to present material in a scientifically-validated manner that an administrator simply doesn't like? Good teachers with pure motives sometimes take the risk of working in poorly run, underprivileged districts because they have some guarantee to due process, some protection from the corruption that often plagues these types of districts. You may think making it easier to fire teachers will solve problems, but I warn you it's a double-edged sword and could ultimately hurt education more than it helps.

It actually doesn't take years in NC, it just takes documenting issues and allowing teachers a chance to improve based on an administrator developed action plan, just like in private industry. Insubordination is grounds for immediate dismissal as are a host of other things that you would expect to be violations of employment that involves children. Too often, administrators don't have or take the time necessary to document teacher issues and a teacher remains in a position they should not be in. Further complicating the issue is an unwillingness to talk about or address the issues that have a huge determinant effect on student understanding and performance: parental involvement and the importance they place on education, and (the very large elephant in the middle of the room) income. Parental income is one of the most durable and useful predictors of student performance.

I am also a business owner and I can't just fire someone without cause so why should education be different. Under the guidelines proposed by the NC legislature (after the NC Supreme Court held that career status was a constitutionally protected employment status), teachers who voluntarily give up their constitutionally protected right to due process (career status) will get a raise; keep your constitutional right and you stay in the same frozen salary as you have been for the past 6 years. So, I ask, is it right and just for a governing body to try and buy your constitutional rights? Instead of debating gun control, what if Congress just passed a law that gave you money in exchange for you giving up your 2nd amendment right forever?

Well stated. I would also note that an increasing portion of faculty in higher ed (adjunct faculty--estimated to be creeping up to 70% of faculty nationally) can in fact be fired without cause at any time.

It's important that tenure at the college/university level does not mean "employment for life"--rather it means tenured faculty are entitled to due process (I'm a tenured professor, and I can certainly be fired, just not simply because someone doesn't like me). Also, the tenure process at college/university is quite different from that in K-12 (where it seems to be a continuation of successful employment).

There's only one standard for judging in the end, excuses not withstanding. And it should be obvious and accepted that no one can spin straw into gold. If none of the kids in a cohort make it past the third grade in twelve years, perhaps someone should be investigating why and let the blame lie where it falls That's why so many see that "No Child Left Behind" standard as pure BS.

Vern, has the the situation you described above every happened? If so, you be more specific on when and where?

Heck, yes, it's happened before. There was a whole group of kids and their families in Detroit several years ago who sued the Detroit school system for "allowing" them to graduate from high school without even knowing how to read. And there have been quite a few professional athletes who it was discovered had graduated from college without the reading or math skills of even an average sixth grader. Many kids depend on social promotions to get diplomas without meeting the standards those diplomas are supposed to represent. Hopefully CC will put an end to that egregious practice...for the sake of ALL kids. Those examples devalue the whole process for everyone.

http://www.csmonitor.com/US...

I'll add, Vern (and full disclosure, I'm a retired elementary teacher), that in at least some districts those social promotions are essentially mandated by the district's administrators who do not want to spend the money that is needed to retain students who do not perform to standard for whatever reasons.

It is troubling that you think standards are to blame for that. It is also troubling that you think teachers are ok with that situation.

Vern, you need to refocus your attack. Standards will do nothing because standards are not the problem. You are uninformed because your only sources are the internet. How crazy do you have to be to think that every teacher from kindergarten to highschool just passes kids along because they are bad teachers? C'mon, you don't honestly believe that? You would have to be blinded with hate and biased to believe that. Its not a teacher problem.

Could you elaborate on what the "one standard for judging" is?

That would be whether the students meet the goals as stated by the standard. If it was a physical competency goal it might be whether the child could run a ten minute mile. They either can or they can't, period. The goal is entirely objective, as it should be.

I agree with you.

Gracias.

Let's be frank here. What percent of teachers need to be fired? Shall we just rank the teachers based on the test scores of their students on CCSS-aligned high stakes tests and toss out the bottom x percent each year? What percent?

Vern, are you citing the loss of jobs to globalization and the recent crash in our economy due to the lack of banking regulation and abuse of lending institutions of those regulations as a problem of the educational system?

Could you provide the lines that would connect those dots? I am having a tough time seeing them.

The most direct linkage between the crash and the educational system was the devastating lack of financial and economic understanding on the part of so many home buyers. Actually that knowledge comes fairly late in the educational curriculum, but it started with the failure to understand concepts a lot earlier. Even the banking regulators and lending administrators didn't understand what was occurring before their very eyes until it was too obvious to ignore. By then it was too late.

Where is funding coming from? School budgets are tight and I know that teachers are copying text books out of their own pockets. Sticky notes are not cheap and the book is probably not cheap either...just saying there is more to education than a common core standard...materials are not cheap. I support teachers 110% but communities, towns do not.

Hello vern,

I was hoping we could have a civilized discussion to bring out some of the misconceptions your comments have aired.

First I wanted to point out that every career or business has workers that are highly competent along with some that you just wonder how they manage to keep their job. From brain surgeons to the guys that replace your oil at Jiffy Lube, there are just going to be some numb skulls that have no idea what they are doing. This is also true in education, but no more so than any other job.

Now to tackle the standards. Standards are a great way to bring unity to our education system across the country. This way all students are learning the same basic principles, at the same age levels. It will however do nothing to drastically affect this educational gap that people (politician driven) perceive between the U.S and other countries. While we all like to think we are not influenced by media and politicians, your comment, "I can't imagine this being any worse than what we have now." shows that you are heavily influenced. Our educational system is one of the best in the world and it is better now then it has ever been in the past. However, it is not portrayed that way by politicians and media that feed on creating negativity. The common core was instituted years ago in Chicago Public Schools and has made little change. Standards help to unify, but will do little to better education in all states.

For further clarification, the common core is derived from a company called Pearson with help from those political bozo's. The educational system does this every 7-10 years. The current system is deemed obsolete and a new "salvation" is put in place with a need to purchase all new materials, text books and curriculums provided by, you guessed it, Pearson. I bet you can now guess who is the #1 provider of all that standardized testing. Here is a hint, the company starts with a P_ _ _ _ _ _.

If you were to compare a struggling business to our educational system (again your view not mine) do you blame the customers for that failing business? Do you blame the workers? Do you blame the management who simply follow the orders of those in charge of the business? or do you blame the people that actually run the business and do not know what they are doing and do not provide the tools for a successful business?

Its not a student problem, its not a teacher problem, its not a principle problem. Its a politician, big business, and superintendent
problem. Politicians and big business control our education system and that is just not going to change without a much much larger scale change. The superintendent is the person in charge of running a district. Ultimately if a district is successful, it's because they are doing a good job. Likewise, if a district is failing it is because this person is poorly managing the district. Don't blame the workers and the customers for the struggling business.

Yes, or at least the lame duck teachers (who are fewer than most people assume) will be forced to take their careers more seriously, maybe even do some voluntary professional development over the summers. I teach, and the best schools that I've been in are those that 1) pay a decent wage and 2) give teachers the autonomy to do what they think, based on their training, is best for the unique group of students they are teaching that year.
Standards are great. There should definitely be a list of skills learned and common knowledge acquired. It's good for society. However, a good lesson should have 1) a goal 2) pre-teaching the information needed to achieve said goal 3) application of that knowledge 4) goal review
In every lesson students should produce something to demonstrate their learning and they should be held accountable for the quality of their products in the form of grades (both formative and summative).
This is all old stuff that's been proven to work. It's the stuff teachers learn in their training. So the problem in my eyes goes back to the first two issue: salary and teacher autonomy.
ajsnookauthor.blogspot.com

Yes, I totally agree, I have been teaching in a Czech gymnazium in Prague, which is trying to break out of the traditional wrote-memory style of Czech education, and I have had to fight many parents whose children were getting straight As in the old system, who are now, in classes which put more responsibility on the children, requires them to think for themselves, and think outside of their little boxes, who then don't do as well---their conclusion is that I am not teaching well. But, when I finally walk them through what I have been trying to do, what I expect from their children, most of them get it.

The resistance to raising standards is probably much higher in this country. After all, this is known as the "age of entitlement". All children here are entitled to a diploma whether they get an education or not. Has to do with being entitled to vote for it rather than being required to actually earn it.

What are the arguments of those that dissent to Common Core? My girlfriend is a teacher and the way she explains it to me, it sounds great. I understand that the transition period is tough but that's no reason to scrap it entirely. I've seen straw man arguments made on both sides so I'm not looking for that. If there are legitimate complaints with the curriculum or the way it's implemented, I'm very curious to know what those complaints are.

There are a lot of valid arguments. Here are a few-

There is a lot of evidence that the K-3 standards are not developmentally appropriate. They are asking kids to have mastered skills that many are not developmentally able to do yet. This doesn't mean that we aren't pushing kids or holding them to high expectations- it means that decades of hard science around childhood abilities were ignored.

Connected to this, it seems foolish to many to say "What skills do kids need for college and career?" and work backwards (which is what CCSS does) rather than say "What do we need to be doing in each grade to create successful learners?

The emphasis on testing is another criticism. Many say this isn't the fault of the standards themselves, but there is a requirement for states with CCSS to test using one of 2 tests- PARCC or Smarter Balance. Both require testing more often and at younger ages than many states require now, and use computers. This is problematic because not all schools have the technology resources needed, and kids as young as 7 are asked to type, when many physically cannot yet.

There is also a lot of pushback against corporate involvement. publishing companies make the curriculum, the standardized tests for the kids, and the teacher licensure exams. There is some shady involvement, for example with Pearson. From a WaPo artilce- "Pearson Charitable Foundation, the nonprofit arm of educational publishing giant Pearson Inc., has agreed to pay a $7.7 million settlement to New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman after he determined that the foundation had created Common Core products to generate “tens of millions of dollars” for its corporate sister."

I'm a teacher in a state with very high standard prior to CCSS adoption, in a district that does very well. I'm not a right-wing conspiracy theorist, I don't think the federal gov is trying to take over my school. I have many valid concerns about this standards based system, and it worries me that the media seems to be presenting nothing but shiny, happy stories about how great it all is.

What evidence? I am a first grade teacher who has used these standards for 4 years and I have documented evidence given to my administrator that the achievement of my class rose with each year I taught with them. This last year all but one in 23 (special needs student) read at or above grade level. I am at a Title I school. The high students were reading 3rd grade leveled books at the end of first grade and the on level students were reading 2nd grade leveled books. The low students were at the grade level benchmark by the end of first grade. They left not only knowing their math facts fluently but the underlying conceptual understanding behind them. They knew place value so well they were able to understand numbers to 1000 and show me what each place meant. I knew where they started based on pre-tests at the beginning of the year. It is not just about aligning the lessons to the standards but about changing the teaching paradigm. When the students are "productively struggling" as this teacher was saying, the students are using critical thinking skills to solve problems and come to conclusions. They are in control of their learning and when they are, they retain much more and become self directed learners. Even first graders can do this as I have seen them do for 4 years. Every day we close read and first graders in my class solve the problems of comprehension by participating in collaborative conversations, disagreeing with one another, then coming to consensus. Every day they explain a math problem to the class and the strategies they used to solve it. I am there to facilitate the learning, to lead them to explore the evidence, to help them learn to think, to use strategies, to solve problems, to create. These standards work if used well and if teachers receive good training. I write some of my own aligned materials but mostly I use my old resources; I just teach with them differently.

The argument for the K-3 standards is only valid in the sense that states have instituted testing. Normal childhood development will be all over the place until around 3-4th grade, when students all tend to end up a about the same level. That is to say, some kids will learn to read earlier, others later, some will be doing double digit multiplication in first grade while others will take longer, but by the end of 3rd grade, they're normally roughly on the same page. High stakes testing is stupid in general, but it's absolutely risible in lower grades because it doesn't actually say anything about how students will end up nor the quality of the teacher. I mean, there's a reason why in first and second grade I just got "S" (Satisfactory) "N" (Needs Improvement) or "U" (Unsatisfactory) as grades, rather than ABCDF or number grades.

"That is to say, some kids will learn to read earlier, others later, some
will be doing double digit multiplication in first grade while others
will take longer, but by the end of 3rd grade, they're normally roughly
on the same page."

This isn't even close to reality, and I'm absolutely astounded it was allowed to stay up for three days without being challenged.

[citation needed] since you feel it's so off. It's plainly evident from when I taught elementary school and often brought up in many of my education classes.

If the standards are developmentally inapropriate, that is entirely valid. The rest... Not so much.
Working backwards is not only far from silly, it is correct. Learning skills is what education... Sorry, learning skills IS education. And if you're going to implement standards, working back from the intended outcome is the appropriate first step.
Testing stinks, but it is the most efficient means of tracking achievement. And since neither publishers nor the CCSS mandate curricula, texts, methods, etc., the idea that they are somehow behind a shadowy plot to suck the system dry is absurd. That is the Left-wing conspiracy theory.

So, yeah, those are some of the arguments, but apart from the first (possibly), they are not valid, and are best dismissed as such.

No it's not correct at all to work backwards BECAUSE it assumes that all students will go to university. There needs to be the option of non-university track for those students and parents who want to do more vocational work. A one sized standard that purports to ready all students for college is bound to fail because America is virtually an illiterate society (100m can't read above 3rd grade, no fault of standards), immense poverty, and a LACK of jobs for those do graduate college.

That is what people like you don't want to discuss.

The key quote is college and career. I agree that high schools need to have better vocational training programs and encourage them as equally valid paths.

Did I say that?
Because I don't think I did. And I know that the CCSS doesn't.

Agreed. I did a great class about backwards planning, that you think about what you want the end to look like and work backwards to figure out all the steps it would take to get there.

Back-to-Front - it's the way to go if you want the process to line up with the desired outcome.

There is a lot of evidence that the K-3 standards are not developmentally appropriate.

But is that just schools that set bars too low complaining? Part of this push back has to be from telling schools "they suck at their job, do better reach higher" and it seems the schools that say "kids aren't ready for this" are ones that have been setting the bar too low and need to be pushing higher.

No one likes being told they are doing a bad job, but in order to do that someone has to deal with that problem.

The emphasis on testing is another criticism.

Everyone wants to know if it's working, we can't wait a few generations to find out if it worked or not. Yes standardized tests aren't the greatest teaching tool but its one of the only ways to see if what they are doing is working. If you have another amazing method, pipe up everyone would love to hear it.

This is problematic because not all schools have the technology resources needed, and kids as young as 7 are asked to type, when many physically cannot yet.

My daughter is 7, we barely turn on the computer at home and she has very little screen time, she isn't gifted or even above average but she can hunt and peck. Still it's not required at ALL. The tests that she takes on computers at school require reading and mouse skills, none of the kids have trouble taking tests on computers, they like it, many of them have trouble sitting down with a book and reading quietly but they'll line up to read way more text and take a test.

As for school funding, computers are getting cheaper and cheaper, smaller and smaller. They don't need a lot of computing power and having the data entered into the system takes a lot of busy work out of administering and grading tests then entering that data in manually. It also makes it easier to share with parents and have parents work with their kids on specific assignments.

Of all the fancy stuff they throw in a classroom computers are some of the best and cheapest tools schools can afford. They are also capable of more than physical supplies that go out of date and have to be replenished.

There is a difference between setting the bar low and teaching what is developmentally appropriate. There are ways to incorporate rigor without just pushing everything down 2 or 3 grades.

But that's the thing though are they just shoving everything down a few grade levels or have some schools been slow pitching to their students for far too long? I'm not sure we can trust their perception because it could be that perception that is holding their students back.

It doesn't mean you're actually up to speed if someone walks up to your car as you're driving and says "you're moving too slow" and you retort "how is that possible this is the fastest I've ever gone".

I know my daughter is doing stuff in 1st grade that I didn't do until 3-4th but she handles it fine so do the majority of the other kids, the few that can't have very fragmented lives outside of school, its not that they couldn't, they are smart kids they just aren't in school enough and they aren't getting the support outside of school.